shab­bat

Although as Alyssa right­ly points out, if we start­ed observ­ing the sab­bath in Lon­don when the sun real­ly sets, only a few of us would have got out of our show­ers in time. I for­get, being a local, how ear­ly it gets dark. Of course, I love it, and start get­ting ner­vous when the sun isn’t down by the time Avery’s home­work is finished.

Speak­ing of, can I say how won­der­ful it is when she does­n’t have any? Sorry.

The crown­ing glo­ry of the reunion of the “Kris­ten and Alyssa Show,” that sta­ple of fam­i­ly enter­tain­ment, was the chance for Kris­ten to eat mat­zoh ball soup. Of course, it was also vast­ly impor­tant to show Annabelle Avery’s school (I don’t know who yawned hard­er, Annabelle or Avery, although most of Avery’s ener­gy was tak­en up refus­ing to walk up the steps: “I have to walk up these steps every DAY!”). But I insist­ed. Then we had a nice snack in Patis­serie Valerie in hon­or of Alyssa’s sis­ter Val, and came home to make Shab­bat din­ner. Not, as Alyssa assures me, that they do this every Fri­day night, but it was a nice coin­ci­dence that the first avail­able night to do it was… Fri­day. I can tell you right now that there’s almost no point post­ing the recipe for the soup. It’s like… it’s like hav­ing Mozart play the piano for you, and at the end you ask him where he got his sheet music. Perfection.

Pas­tra­mi and salt beef from Sel­f­ridges, rye bread, weird pick­les from the super­mar­ket, good Ger­man mus­tard, soured cream, home­made apple­sauce with one apple left unpeeled, as per Alyssa’s Nan­ny’s recipe. “What? When on earth did you have a nan­ny?” I asked, hor­ri­fied that an entire chap­ter of Alyssa lore might have been lost to me dur­ing our long years of friend­ship. “No, my NAN­NY. My grand­moth­er! Yes, I had a nan­ny. When my moth­er was doing what?” We all sim­ply tucked in and were hap­py. Of course the evening degen­er­at­ed into the chil­dren’s ren­di­tions of “Bop Till You Drop,” from High School Musi­cal, which I am afraid has thor­ough­ly sup­plant­ed any love­ly Christ­mas car­ols as the Song of the Hol­i­day. Ah well, every sil­ver lin­ing has its cloud.

Tell you what. I’ll ask Alyssa for the soup recipe, and then you and I col­lec­tive­ly can try to fig­ure out what she’s left off, to keep us in her thrall. Mean­while, I have the leftovers…